I do not think that I am alone in saying that Uncle Vanya is a very strange character. Not only was his personality strange, but I want to talk about his closeness to people that he conversed with. This was awkward and slightly painful for me to watch. They all didn't seem to speak to eachother like they were about to kiss, but Uncle Vanya definitely did. He even closed his eyes sometimes and made these puckering faces as though he was ready for the kiss--then he would linger there. The worst was when he would speak to Yelana, because he actually did love her, and he would sweet talk her in this same position. If I was Yelana, I would have been officially creeped out, but she only objects on a few occasions--the rest of the time simply putting up with it. Not to mention that his voice can be very annoying at times (the bird in Alladin and T-Rex in Toy Story). Would anyone else like to comment on the awkward behavior of Vanya? - cdu-c Mar 11, 2008
I think Uncle Vanya's awkward behavior is due to his tragic life. All his life he has done nothing but worked for Alexander for only 500 rubles a year, which by the way is equivalent of twenty dollars a year. Working his entire life, he has never had a chance to feel or experience love or what it is to be intimate with someone else. So whenever he exhibits his odd tendencies while he talks or interacts with people it could be a desperate attempt at being close with someone. And Yelena is probably the first non-relative woman that he interacted with in a long time, so when this opportunity presents itself Vanya was did not want to lost the only possible chance he may ever have of experiencing love.- MSu-c Mar 11, 2008
Vanya was definitely a weird character. He was a creeper in my opinion but I think he did that because he views himself as a failure. He thinks he wasted the best years of his life slaving away for the professor. This has led to depression and extreme amounts of guilt and remorse. The fact that he never really had any companionship from a non-relative hasn’t helped the situation. All of these factors have combined to create one very socially awkward person who yearns for one of the first non-relative women than he sees. I think his odd interactions are a combination of mental anguish over his tragic life and his desire for companionship. However, I wonder how much of his tragic life is actually his fault. We all know that the professor only paid him 500 rubles a year for a long time and never gave Vanya a raise. But, towards the end of the play, when Vanya was complaining about it, the professor said he would have raised his salary if Vanya had ever asked. Was the professor just back tracking and trying to save face for past actions or did he actually mean it and therefore, should Vanya be held partially accountable for his tragic life? - kli-c Mar 11, 2008
I agree with MSu. Uncle Vanya has never been close to a woman before in his life, and he is already nearing fifty. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, but Uncle Vanya is the kind of man who has been looking and, consequently, failed in this search his whole life: it was not entirely because of his lifestyle choice to work for the professor. He has also been isolated on the estate for twenty-five years with no one to communicate with besides his close family and a few servants; after years of living like that I can see why he might be a bit socially awkward. Also, by the end of the play, it is shown that Uncle Vanya is not entirely well in his psyche, and I am positive that this problem did not spring up in the few months of the play: I feel that Vanya has always had some issues with his emotions, and these issues naturally affect his conversation style. - dsU-c Mar 11, 2008
Though I will not justify Vanya's lack of self-control, I will state that Uncle Vanya's creepy behavior is attributed to, not only his tragic life, but also his lack of touch with reality. Thus, he feels it O.K. to try to molest women who are decades younger, inches taller, and infinitely more beautiful. His life is basically over in terms of excitement and fun, but, he feels that he has one more oppurtunity in Yelena. When thinking of Yelena, Vanya acts with the regret in the back of his mind concerning, "If only I was younger." Indeed, Vanya asserts that he had a respectable shot to marry Yelena when he was much younger, but that chance has passed. This is a tough reality for Vanya to accept, and, as such, he tries to convince himself that he is younger, that he is not a creepy old man, that Yelena is not currently married, and that he does have a respectable shot at courting Yelena. If these premises were true, then we would all agree that Vanya is justified, but these premises are true only in the mind of Uncle Vanya. And so, Uncle Vanya is wacko.
Keep in mind though, the Doctor was also behaving in a rather creepy manner. Had Vanya not shown up with flowers while the doctor was leaning towards Yelena, who knows what would have happened. In both cases, these men are old, lonely, and looking for a new source of life, a meaning to their existence besides drinking vodka, and, in the case of the doctor, planting trees.- TMc-c Mar 11, 2008
Vanya was by far the creepiest character in the play and the actor who played him really played up the creepiness. The way he leaned in when talking to people and his deep interest in Yelena was painfully creepy. But at the same time, you have to feel bad for the guy; he had an awful life, he didn't feel like he had done anything worthwhile in his life, and he was in love with the wife of a man he had worked for many years. He was completely out of his league, but somehow in his altered vision of reality he thought he was within his boundaries. I think he is living in his own little world and he seems to be feeling that he's on his own more than ever--he's trying to reach out to people, feel the intimacy he lacked in his life, and he doesn't know how so he's making some kind of strong but misguided attempts to connect with other people. - dru-c Mar 11, 2008
I agree that Vanya had his moments in this play. But like others have said, I think much of it has to be attributed to his tragic life and all he has suffered through. But I think we also have to keep in mind that this was just one director's view of how Vanya should act, there could be other interpretations out there - though I doubt they would be as good. But if we criticize Vanay for being so akaward, I think we have to keep in mind that none of the other characters were all that "normal" either. Sonya pined after one man for 6 years, the professor was always thinking he was "sick", the doctor is completely oblivious, and Nanny walks around the house clucking for the chickens to come. - MBe-c Mar 11, 2008
I related to Vanya with many of the discussions we have had in Fr. Bob's class this year with Ecclesiastes, Job, and the "existential vacumn"-like scenarios. I know many people do not take this class, but the basic concept I find similar is that we must have a meaning in our life to create a will to live. This is the exact struggle that I think Vanya is going through in his life at the time of the play, the same feeling that makes him steal the morphine to kill himself. He had been struggling all his life for the Professor and for what? He is poor, unhappy, and alone. What meaning has his life had? He talks about all the wonderful things he could have done, but why not try to do some of them now? Why does he resign himself in the end to carrying on the same work? The answer: he still has not found that meaning. He sees Yelena as an escape route, a beautiful woman still holding onto the flower of her youth, but no meaning lies in her either. She will not reaffirm his life or existence, only he can do that for himself. So yes Vanya was creepy at times and acted strangely, but I could find this search for meaning utterly reassuring with him. What did everyone else think?- AHa-c Mar 11, 2008 In response to AHa, I can definitely see the connection between Vanya's life and the books of Ecclesiastes and Job. Vanya truly has no meaning left in his life. The only thing he is living for is to complain and think about how he has wasted his life. I don't think that we can really call this a will to live. We have seen that he has seriously contemplated killing himself.
He has suffered much in his life. It is a different kind of suffering than the physical suffering which causes spiritual suffering that have often been related to the book of Job. Vanya is suffering in a spiritual and psychological way. He has been betrayed and disappointed time and time again. He no longer has trust in other people. He emptied himself and gave of himself in order to care for those that he loved and he only gets grief in return. He is treated horribly. I can't really blame him for the way that he behaved.
Yes, he is awkward and creepy, but who can blame him. He feels that he has wasted his life and he only lives in order to think about how he has wasted his life. He has no meaning and is ready to give up. His social issues stem from his lack of drive and meaningfulness. He needs something to live for. This lack of meaning is driving his life at the end of the play. Unlike Job, Vanya is not about to receive immediate rewards for his suffering. He is not going to be given back everything that he lost. - bga-c Mar 11, 2008
I'm with you, CDu - very creepy. It wasn't just how close he would talk to people that got to me, though. It was mostly the way he talked, and his tone. A lot of times I was unable to tell whether he was joking or being serious in the film. Like when he would say things to Yelana, and she would giggle, one would assume he was just being silly, right? Like he was just messing around or something. I probably think this because we students do it all the time. We flirt obnoxiously just for the fun of it, without placing any meaning behind it. We just try to make the other person smile or laugh. The thing with Vanya, though, is that he turns serious and the viewer thinks, "Are you serious?" To me he is hard to read sometimes, and that gets under my skin. - Sha-c Mar 12, 2008
Not to hop on the bandwagon, but yes Vanya is definitely really creepy and odd. He is obviously a very sad guy who feels as though he has wasted his life because he wanted a wife of his own and here he is at 47 years of age still living with his family toiling away all by himself. Basically, he achieved nothing in life that he wanted to achieve and this naturally led to him being a rather depressive person who was very defensive of what little he had. This is why he gets so up in arms about Alexander's proposition to sell the estate because without the estate, he really has nothing because his entire little life is based around living and working on it. It's just a sad little life that he leads, and I can fully understand why he'd be angry and depressed because nothing at all ever seems to go his way. He doesn't get the girl. He doesn't get wealth. He doesn't get recognition. He just sort of drifts through life on an estate that he discovers doesn't really mean much of anything to Alexander who is ready and willing to sell it and leave. This is obviously central to Vanya's suicidal thoughts because it is here that he finally realizes just how much of a waste his life has been. He just wants something to live for and lucky for him the estate doesn't get sold and he doesn't kill himself so I guess a little hope for the future remains.- KRi-c Mar 12, 2008
I personally thought that Vanya was a sympathetic character. You can understand his situation and at times you just want to scream at him to get on with his life and try to make it better. Obviously he is in a very difficult and real situation. I think that through Vanya, Chekhov was making a commentary on the behavior of many middle aged men and women who lack purpose in life and think they can find no happiness. It is a good lesson for younger people to learn now: don't put all your eggs in one basket. He had only one chance for happiness and when that didn't work he just sulked about it. People have to try to do things to make themselves happier, and not give up on life. - PSp-c
Personally, I was very annoyed by Vanya's character. Specifically, he always talked about what he wished he had done. He recalls how he could've married and/or became someone important had he not wasted his youth working for Aleksandr. However, there are characters who have a similar fate, yet they don't have suicidal thoughts or complain about their life. For example, Sonya is lonely and will probably spend the rest of her life working and unmarried. Yet she does not complain of her problems and instead lives life without wondering what could have been. I think that Chekhov is trying to show us that life is not always what we want it to be, but we should accept it or try to change it and not just talk of what we could have done in the past. I find myself doing this sometimes. For example, "if I had studied for that test, my grade would be so much better". The fact is, however, I cannot go back and study, I must accept responsibility for my actions and move on. - KSm-c Mar 13, 2008
I think that Uncle Vanya was lost and didn't know what to do with his life. I saw him getting close to people as some kind of inward struggle to reach out for people. He seems like he needs to find something to cling to, and he hopes that he can find it in the other people, particularly Yalena. The only thing that I was thinking about was that nobody seemed to mind, or notice that he was so in their face, which makes me wonder if it is just the way that he has always been. - jko-c Mar 13, 2008
Uncle Vanya has said himself repeatedly that he has nothing left to live for no real purpose in life. He feels that the better part of his life has been wasted by a charlatin professor who duped him into believeing in him when really the professor ended up being a failure. This kind of torture and pain to the huamn soul, to think that so much of your finite and pressious time was wasted would be enough to drive anyone to try and grasp at any last dreg that life offered you. Vanya right now is grasping for straws to try and fill his life and a very real easy way to do that is to try and find someone else to share it with, even if it was just a purely lustful attachment, to try and share or at least drive away the crushing despair that he is feeling at this moment. It is only natural for him then to try and woo Yelena because she is extremly beautiful, married to an old dinosaur so even if Vanya is no good catch she should be desparate enough for at least a little fling and it is something to do some goal to set in his life so even if it will embarrass him to try and make her like him it is better than sitting around regretting years wasted and more wasted years to come without being able to do anything about it. - DGr-c
Vanya actually really annoyed me. Not that I thought that the actor did a bad job, and certainly not in a way that would detract from the play, but when I thought about him as a person--what would I think if he sat next to me in class? or if I met him at a party?--I didn't like him. He was whiny and pathetic. He was just too desperate to be likable, and I feel like he wanted other people to validate his life and self-worth, since obviously he had little confidence. As for the other characters, I think that they had bigger problems to worry about, like their own depression and frustration, but I'm sure Vanya was just another factor that made their lives less than satisfactory. Furthermore, throughout the play, we see very little action, and when the professor tries to actually take action by selling the estate, everyone is too afraid to move forward. The characters are paralyzed, and so no one bothers to try to change Vanya either. - lsi-c Mar 13, 2008
I think part of the reason vanya was so strange was because he was completely fed up with his life. He tried anything new to try and make himself happy. If that meant going after his not available love he was going to do it. I think his strangeness was his coping and i think that he was becoming looney being stuck in that house with the doctor whom he hated and his mother that loved the doctor more than she loved vanya. I feel for vanya strange as he is but i woul dgo cray too if i was living with those people. eh also seems to be having a later mid-life crisis. He keeps complaining that he is old and that he wasted his life so he then in turn goes and does odd things to try and ignore the fact that he has brought to mind.- JJa-c Mar 13, 2008
I think Uncle Vanya's awkward behavior is due to his tragic life. All his life he has done nothing but worked for Alexander for only 500 rubles a year, which by the way is equivalent of twenty dollars a year. Working his entire life, he has never had a chance to feel or experience love or what it is to be intimate with someone else. So whenever he exhibits his odd tendencies while he talks or interacts with people it could be a desperate attempt at being close with someone. And Yelena is probably the first non-relative woman that he interacted with in a long time, so when this opportunity presents itself Vanya was did not want to lost the only possible chance he may ever have of experiencing love.-
Vanya was definitely a weird character. He was a creeper in my opinion but I think he did that because he views himself as a failure. He thinks he wasted the best years of his life slaving away for the professor. This has led to depression and extreme amounts of guilt and remorse. The fact that he never really had any companionship from a non-relative hasn’t helped the situation. All of these factors have combined to create one very socially awkward person who yearns for one of the first non-relative women than he sees. I think his odd interactions are a combination of mental anguish over his tragic life and his desire for companionship. However, I wonder how much of his tragic life is actually his fault. We all know that the professor only paid him 500 rubles a year for a long time and never gave Vanya a raise. But, towards the end of the play, when Vanya was complaining about it, the professor said he would have raised his salary if Vanya had ever asked. Was the professor just back tracking and trying to save face for past actions or did he actually mean it and therefore, should Vanya be held partially accountable for his tragic life?
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I agree with MSu. Uncle Vanya has never been close to a woman before in his life, and he is already nearing fifty. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, but Uncle Vanya is the kind of man who has been looking and, consequently, failed in this search his whole life: it was not entirely because of his lifestyle choice to work for the professor. He has also been isolated on the estate for twenty-five years with no one to communicate with besides his close family and a few servants; after years of living like that I can see why he might be a bit socially awkward. Also, by the end of the play, it is shown that Uncle Vanya is not entirely well in his psyche, and I am positive that this problem did not spring up in the few months of the play: I feel that Vanya has always had some issues with his emotions, and these issues naturally affect his conversation style.
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Though I will not justify Vanya's lack of self-control, I will state that Uncle Vanya's creepy behavior is attributed to, not only his tragic life, but also his lack of touch with reality. Thus, he feels it O.K. to try to molest women who are decades younger, inches taller, and infinitely more beautiful. His life is basically over in terms of excitement and fun, but, he feels that he has one more oppurtunity in Yelena. When thinking of Yelena, Vanya acts with the regret in the back of his mind concerning, "If only I was younger." Indeed, Vanya asserts that he had a respectable shot to marry Yelena when he was much younger, but that chance has passed. This is a tough reality for Vanya to accept, and, as such, he tries to convince himself that he is younger, that he is not a creepy old man, that Yelena is not currently married, and that he does have a respectable shot at courting Yelena. If these premises were true, then we would all agree that Vanya is justified, but these premises are true only in the mind of Uncle Vanya. And so, Uncle Vanya is wacko.
Keep in mind though, the Doctor was also behaving in a rather creepy manner. Had Vanya not shown up with flowers while the doctor was leaning towards Yelena, who knows what would have happened. In both cases, these men are old, lonely, and looking for a new source of life, a meaning to their existence besides drinking vodka, and, in the case of the doctor, planting trees.-
Vanya was by far the creepiest character in the play and the actor who played him really played up the creepiness. The way he leaned in when talking to people and his deep interest in Yelena was painfully creepy. But at the same time, you have to feel bad for the guy; he had an awful life, he didn't feel like he had done anything worthwhile in his life, and he was in love with the wife of a man he had worked for many years. He was completely out of his league, but somehow in his altered vision of reality he thought he was within his boundaries. I think he is living in his own little world and he seems to be feeling that he's on his own more than ever--he's trying to reach out to people, feel the intimacy he lacked in his life, and he doesn't know how so he's making some kind of strong but misguided attempts to connect with other people. -
I agree that Vanya had his moments in this play. But like others have said, I think much of it has to be attributed to his tragic life and all he has suffered through. But I think we also have to keep in mind that this was just one director's view of how Vanya should act, there could be other interpretations out there - though I doubt they would be as good. But if we criticize Vanay for being so akaward, I think we have to keep in mind that none of the other characters were all that "normal" either. Sonya pined after one man for 6 years, the professor was always thinking he was "sick", the doctor is completely oblivious, and Nanny walks around the house clucking for the chickens to come.
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I related to Vanya with many of the discussions we have had in Fr. Bob's class this year with Ecclesiastes, Job, and the "existential vacumn"-like scenarios. I know many people do not take this class, but the basic concept I find similar is that we must have a meaning in our life to create a will to live. This is the exact struggle that I think Vanya is going through in his life at the time of the play, the same feeling that makes him steal the morphine to kill himself. He had been struggling all his life for the Professor and for what? He is poor, unhappy, and alone. What meaning has his life had? He talks about all the wonderful things he could have done, but why not try to do some of them now? Why does he resign himself in the end to carrying on the same work? The answer: he still has not found that meaning. He sees Yelena as an escape route, a beautiful woman still holding onto the flower of her youth, but no meaning lies in her either. She will not reaffirm his life or existence, only he can do that for himself. So yes Vanya was creepy at times and acted strangely, but I could find this search for meaning utterly reassuring with him. What did everyone else think?-
In response to AHa, I can definitely see the connection between Vanya's life and the books of Ecclesiastes and Job. Vanya truly has no meaning left in his life. The only thing he is living for is to complain and think about how he has wasted his life. I don't think that we can really call this a will to live. We have seen that he has seriously contemplated killing himself.
He has suffered much in his life. It is a different kind of suffering than the physical suffering which causes spiritual suffering that have often been related to the book of Job. Vanya is suffering in a spiritual and psychological way. He has been betrayed and disappointed time and time again. He no longer has trust in other people. He emptied himself and gave of himself in order to care for those that he loved and he only gets grief in return. He is treated horribly. I can't really blame him for the way that he behaved.
Yes, he is awkward and creepy, but who can blame him. He feels that he has wasted his life and he only lives in order to think about how he has wasted his life. He has no meaning and is ready to give up. His social issues stem from his lack of drive and meaningfulness. He needs something to live for. This lack of meaning is driving his life at the end of the play. Unlike Job, Vanya is not about to receive immediate rewards for his suffering. He is not going to be given back everything that he lost.
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I'm with you, CDu - very creepy. It wasn't just how close he would talk to people that got to me, though. It was mostly the way he talked, and his tone. A lot of times I was unable to tell whether he was joking or being serious in the film. Like when he would say things to Yelana, and she would giggle, one would assume he was just being silly, right? Like he was just messing around or something. I probably think this because we students do it all the time. We flirt obnoxiously just for the fun of it, without placing any meaning behind it. We just try to make the other person smile or laugh. The thing with Vanya, though, is that he turns serious and the viewer thinks, "Are you serious?" To me he is hard to read sometimes, and that gets under my skin. -
Not to hop on the bandwagon, but yes Vanya is definitely really creepy and odd. He is obviously a very sad guy who feels as though he has wasted his life because he wanted a wife of his own and here he is at 47 years of age still living with his family toiling away all by himself. Basically, he achieved nothing in life that he wanted to achieve and this naturally led to him being a rather depressive person who was very defensive of what little he had. This is why he gets so up in arms about Alexander's proposition to sell the estate because without the estate, he really has nothing because his entire little life is based around living and working on it. It's just a sad little life that he leads, and I can fully understand why he'd be angry and depressed because nothing at all ever seems to go his way. He doesn't get the girl. He doesn't get wealth. He doesn't get recognition. He just sort of drifts through life on an estate that he discovers doesn't really mean much of anything to Alexander who is ready and willing to sell it and leave. This is obviously central to Vanya's suicidal thoughts because it is here that he finally realizes just how much of a waste his life has been. He just wants something to live for and lucky for him the estate doesn't get sold and he doesn't kill himself so I guess a little hope for the future remains.-
I personally thought that Vanya was a sympathetic character. You can understand his situation and at times you just want to scream at him to get on with his life and try to make it better. Obviously he is in a very difficult and real situation. I think that through Vanya, Chekhov was making a commentary on the behavior of many middle aged men and women who lack purpose in life and think they can find no happiness. It is a good lesson for younger people to learn now: don't put all your eggs in one basket. He had only one chance for happiness and when that didn't work he just sulked about it. People have to try to do things to make themselves happier, and not give up on life. -
Personally, I was very annoyed by Vanya's character. Specifically, he always talked about what he wished he had done. He recalls how he could've married and/or became someone important had he not wasted his youth working for Aleksandr. However, there are characters who have a similar fate, yet they don't have suicidal thoughts or complain about their life. For example, Sonya is lonely and will probably spend the rest of her life working and unmarried. Yet she does not complain of her problems and instead lives life without wondering what could have been. I think that Chekhov is trying to show us that life is not always what we want it to be, but we should accept it or try to change it and not just talk of what we could have done in the past. I find myself doing this sometimes. For example, "if I had studied for that test, my grade would be so much better". The fact is, however, I cannot go back and study, I must accept responsibility for my actions and move on.
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I think that Uncle Vanya was lost and didn't know what to do with his life. I saw him getting close to people as some kind of inward struggle to reach out for people. He seems like he needs to find something to cling to, and he hopes that he can find it in the other people, particularly Yalena. The only thing that I was thinking about was that nobody seemed to mind, or notice that he was so in their face, which makes me wonder if it is just the way that he has always been.
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Uncle Vanya has said himself repeatedly that he has nothing left to live for no real purpose in life. He feels that the better part of his life has been wasted by a charlatin professor who duped him into believeing in him when really the professor ended up being a failure. This kind of torture and pain to the huamn soul, to think that so much of your finite and pressious time was wasted would be enough to drive anyone to try and grasp at any last dreg that life offered you. Vanya right now is grasping for straws to try and fill his life and a very real easy way to do that is to try and find someone else to share it with, even if it was just a purely lustful attachment, to try and share or at least drive away the crushing despair that he is feeling at this moment. It is only natural for him then to try and woo Yelena because she is extremly beautiful, married to an old dinosaur so even if Vanya is no good catch she should be desparate enough for at least a little fling and it is something to do some goal to set in his life so even if it will embarrass him to try and make her like him it is better than sitting around regretting years wasted and more wasted years to come without being able to do anything about it.
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Vanya actually really annoyed me. Not that I thought that the actor did a bad job, and certainly not in a way that would detract from the play, but when I thought about him as a person--what would I think if he sat next to me in class? or if I met him at a party?--I didn't like him. He was whiny and pathetic. He was just too desperate to be likable, and I feel like he wanted other people to validate his life and self-worth, since obviously he had little confidence. As for the other characters, I think that they had bigger problems to worry about, like their own depression and frustration, but I'm sure Vanya was just another factor that made their lives less than satisfactory. Furthermore, throughout the play, we see very little action, and when the professor tries to actually take action by selling the estate, everyone is too afraid to move forward. The characters are paralyzed, and so no one bothers to try to change Vanya either. -
I think part of the reason vanya was so strange was because he was completely fed up with his life. He tried anything new to try and make himself happy. If that meant going after his not available love he was going to do it. I think his strangeness was his coping and i think that he was becoming looney being stuck in that house with the doctor whom he hated and his mother that loved the doctor more than she loved vanya. I feel for vanya strange as he is but i woul dgo cray too if i was living with those people. eh also seems to be having a later mid-life crisis. He keeps complaining that he is old and that he wasted his life so he then in turn goes and does odd things to try and ignore the fact that he has brought to mind.-